Pediatric Radiologists at Packard/Stanford Bring Home Major Awards

For Release: May 11, 2010

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Scientists and physicians in pediatric radiology at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford University have garnered an exceptionally large number of awards and honors recently from a professional association of pediatric radiologists. For the second year in a row, researchers at the hospital and university nabbed the prestigious John Caffey Award for Best Basic Science Research Paper at the annual meeting of the Society for Pediatric Radiology in April. Named in honor of the doctor credited with having launched the field of pediatric radiology, the 2010 award recognized four papers by the research group of Roland Bammer, PhD, an assistant professor (research) of radiology.

Also at the meeting, radiology resident Albert Hsiao, MD, PhD, received the John A. Kirkpatrick Young Investigator Award, which is given to the author of the best paper presented by a resident or fellow. Hsiao’s paper was titled “Volumetric Flow Assessment in Congenital Heart Disease with 4D Flow MRI.” “The receipt of the two major SPR awards by one institution in a single year is a great honor and may be unprecedented,” said Richard Barth, MD, a professor of radiology and radiologist-in-chief at Packard Children’s. “The recognized research reflects the imaging advances made possible by converting our department from a generalist model to a sub-specialist model.”

A person getting an MRI scan must remain very still, which, as Barth noted, is tough for young children. But Stefan Skare, PhD, a magnetic-resonance physicist in Bammer’s group and a lead author on one of the papers, found ways to correct for the effects of wiggly kids—work that is described in two of the papers, “High-Resolution Motion-Corrected Diffusion-Tensor Imaging (DTI) in Infants” and “3D SAP-EPI in Motion-Corrected Fast Susceptibility Weighted Imaging (SWI).” In addition to the Caffey and Kirkpatrick awards, Barth was named the recipient of the Presidential Recognition Award, which honors “individuals whose energy and creativity have made a significant impact on the work of the Society and its service to its members.” He also was elected second vice president of SPR, a post he will occupy beginning in 2011. He will begin a one-year term as president in 2013. Beverly Newman, MD, a pediatric radiologist at Packard Children’s and an associate professor of radiology at Stanford, was elected to the society’s nominating committee, “which clearly is a testimonial to her national leadership stature in pediatric radiology,” Barth said.

2010 John Caffey Award for Best Basic Science Research Paper

“Clinical Evaluation of Readout-Segmented-EPI for Diffusion-Weighted Imaging”— Roland Bammer, PhD; Samantha J. Holdsworth, PhD; Stefan Skare, PhD; Kristen Yeom, MD; Patrick D. Barnes, MD

“High-Resolution Motion-Corrected Diffusion-Tensor Imaging (DTI) in Infants”— Stefan T. Skare, PhD; Samantha J. Holdsworth, PhD; Kristen Yeom, MD; Patrick D. Barnes, MD; Roland Bammer, PhD

“3D SAP-EPI in Motion-Corrected Fast Susceptibility Weighted Imaging (SWI)”—Roland Bammer, PhD; Samantha J. Holdsworth, PhD; Stefan Skare, PhD; Kristen Yeom, MD; Patrick D. Barnes, MD

“T1-Weighted 3D SAP-EPI for Use in Pediatric Imaging”—Roland Bammer, PhD; Samantha J. Holdsworth, PhD; Stefan Skare; PhD, Kristen Yeom, MD; Patrick D. Barnes, MD

John A. Kirkpatrick Young Investigator Award

“Volumetric Flow Assessment in Congenital Heart Disease with 4D Flow MRI”—Albert Hsiao, MD, PhD; Marcus T. Alley, PhD; Payam Massaband, MD; Robert J. Herfkens, MD; Frandics P. Chan, MD, PhD; Shreyas S. Vasanawala, MD, PhD

Presidential Recognition Award

Richard Barth, MD, professor of radiology and radiologist-in-chief at Packard Children’s Hospital.

Authors

Robert Dicks
(650) 497-8364
rdicks@stanfordchildrens.org